RIM From Good To Bad In One Day, Lawsuit Threatens BBX Name

Just when all the excitement over RIM's new BBX platform seems to have peaked, RIM has been struck with yet another lawsuit. This time it is in direct relation to the BBX name. BASIS International a global software company, promptly took legal action after RIM's press release about the BBX name stating that the name is causing great confusion with in its world wide customer base.

In an official statment ASIS Chairman and CEO, Nico Spence, said,

“We have thousands of product licenses installed worldwide with the ‘BBX’ prefix that run on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and other proprietary UNIX OSs from IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and SUN, with mobile clients running Apple iOS, Google Android, and Windows Mobile. We are fielding numerous customer inquiries voicing their confusion about the RIM announcement.”

It seems as though RIM never took the time to review the current trademarks. The ironic part here is that Spence also states the following;

“Ironically, BASIS’ BBx may aid RIM in its quest to grab a share of the application market for mobile devices in that any application created with BASIS’ BBx for the Android or iOS mobile devices will also run on BlackBerry products.”

RIM has release the following statement regarding the issue:

“RIM has not yet received a copy of the legal complaint described in Basis International’s press release, but we do not believe the marks are confusing, particularly since our respective companies are in different lines of business."

Who would have thought this early in the game that RIM would be facing legal problems. We will keep you posted on this as it unfolds. I wonder what the new name will be if they have to change it. What do you think it should be called?